Veer sent me an e-newsletter yesterday with a type update. Normally these go straight in the delete folder; I have a bazillion fonts and there are few that are interesting enough or practical enough to spend a couple hundred dollars per typeface to purchase.

However, this particular new typeface caught my eye. It’s called Olicana, and it’s designed to convincingly imitate handwriting in ink and steel nib. With over 100 pairs of duplicate character combinations, a few three-character ligatures, alternates, endings, scratch-throughs and blotches, the result is an elegant, intriguing, highly customizable and surprisingly readable typeface that does a very good job at imitating handwriting. The splats are an especially fun concept.

I’m still not sure if I’m going to shell out $160 for it, but I’m keeping it in my bookmarks just in case. I’m always looking for nice handwriting typefaces to use to convincingly “hand address” wedding invitations (sorry calligraphers, my clients have budgets).

This may have been around a few times already, but it’s such an interesting idea and has resulted in the most amazing photos, I just had to write about it. The website is called Trash the Dress and it’s a movement of photographers and ex-brides to do the most unusual photo shoots, almost the anti-wedding portrait, without any concern for preserving their gown. The resulting photographs are sometimes humorous, sometimes dark, but almost always incredibly evocative and memorable. I haven’t seen any information about licensing these photos, no doubt they belong to the brides… but what a cool fit that would be for my wedding design company! It’s attitude, it’s beauty, it’s fun… although I do cringe at the thought of those wasted gowns. Maybe this is a good opportunity for dry cleaners to boost their business! A few of my favorites below: